advice re successful fashion business please!

I’d like some opinions on my current situation. I have a 5 month old alternative fashion online retail business, which has been making £500 per month profit. 3 months ago I also opened a small physical shop in a busy location. Unfortunately this is not doing so well and the internet business is now subsidising the physical shop. Overall I am breaking even.

I am thinking about closing the physical shop, so that I can return to my £500/month profit! But I don’t know whether I should stick it out longer seeing as I’m not getting further into debt, just breaking even.

sounds like your target consumers are found online and are not walking past your shop even thought passing traffic is high – do you target a young consumer group by any chance?

just to check you should stand outside your shop for a day and offer leaflets with a nice promo offer and see if anyone comes into buy then – if not youre in the wrong location and might as well shut up shop – sorry

sounds like your online business is the successful part and you should look to build that up eg more online advertising, localisation etc

Hi,
I’m currently studying fashion promotion at uni, and part of one of our up and coming projects is to contact new fashion business’ under 3 years old and offer our help to promote as they are a new business. I was wandering if you would be interested? Thanks for your time.
Abbe

The shop will have much higher overheads than the online business. E.g. rent, rates, insurance, staff, etc. and it’s much more tying for you too. The website can sell 24 hours a day and will require you to collect the orders and post them once a day – the shop requires 8 hours constant supervision.

As much as you want the shop to work, there are loads of variables which could scuttle your good ideas. Obviously there is a market for what you are selling – but is your shop in the right place? Do people buying alternative clothing want to go into a shop or do they think it’s more exclusive because they found it online? Do people know about the shop? Why would they come to the shop rather than have it come to them in the online version?

Me? I would close the shop and put the stock back into the internet business and cut your losses.

Caroline

PS> I highly recommend viewing some of the "Mary Queen Of Shops" programmes on BBC iplayer – the woman is a genius!

hi there was just searching for how i could get advice on my online fashion business 2, and was wondering if you had the time to help me out? im looking for constructive honest advice if you can
my web is http://www.southorient.net